THE NEW SPACE RACE: Shotwell predicts Starship to be most valuable part of SpaceX.

“The company is incredibly valuable, I think, right now because of Starlink,” she said. “Starlink will add a zero, probably, at least as we continue to grow the Starlink system.”

That growth comes in many different markets, from residential broadband services to maritime and aviation connectivity. SpaceX will begin offering direct-to-device services “within the next month or so,” she said, with an initial version for “very light data” and text messaging.

However, she argued that Starship will be even more valuable to SpaceX in the long run. “Ultimately, I think Starship will be the thing that takes us over the top as one of the most valuable companies. We can’t even envision what Starship is going to do to humanity and humans’ lives, and I think that will be the most valuable part of SpaceX.”

That is based on the belief, she said, that the fully reusable rocket with a payload capacity to low Earth orbit that could exceed 100 metric tons, will “change everything” about spaceflight, and not just with lower launch costs. “Starship is so big that the concept of how we put things in space, how people will travel in space, is totally different.”

The rest of the world has had since 2017 to match SpaceX’s Falcon 9 on reusability and price — and failed. SpaceX is working very hard to make Falcon 9 obsolete with Starship, even before any other company or country catches up to where SpaceX was almost eight years ago.

GOOD IDEA: Combat antisemitism and protect free speech by ending double standards for different students, scholars say.

OHIO: Here Are The Top Contenders to Replace JD Vance in the Senate.

HIGHER EDUCATION BUBBLE UPDATE: University of Maryland to offer ‘Fat Studies’ course about the ‘intersection’ of ‘blackness’ and ‘fatness.’

‘AS TRUMP THREATENS DEPORTATIONS, CAMPUS LEADERS TREAD CAREFULLY.‘ Carefully? Wesleyan President Michael Roth, fresh off complaining about how college presidents are not sufficiently vocal about being leftists, proudly claims Wesleyan will do nothing to voluntarily help the government pursue undocumented students before more quietly acknowledging that yes, colleges have to obey subpoenas, etc.

In what universe is it “careful” or responsible in any way to admit students here unlawfully (and take their money) when those students can have the rug pulled out the moment someone decides to enforce the law already on the books?

PLEASE, STOP — THEY WON’T LET ME VOTE FOR HIM AGAIN: Ramaswamy outlines DOGE’s vision to bring ‘sweeping change’ to bureaucracy: ‘Restoring… accountability.’

“The failures of the executive branch need to be addressed because the dirty little secret right now is the people we elect to run the government, they’re not the ones who actually run the government. It’s the unelected bureaucrats in the administrative state that was created through executive action. It’s going to be fixed through executive action,” he said.

“Think about the Supreme Court’s environment. Over the last several years, they’ve held that many of those regulations are unconstitutional at a large scale. Rescind those regulations, pull those regs back, and then that gives us the industrial logic to then downsize the size of that administrative state. And the beauty of all of this is that can be achieved just through executive action without Congress. Score some early wins, and then you look at those bigger portions of the federal budget that need to be addressed one by one,” he continued.

Ramaswamy pledged to bring “sweeping change” “as early and as quickly as possible.”

Faster? Please!

CHANGE:

Fascinating https://t.co/Yzt03uWwY1

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) November 18, 2024

Plus:

BREAKING: Donald Trump (@realDonaldTrump) has surpassed Taylor Swift in followers to become the 8th most followed account on 𝕏 pic.twitter.com/3fzL11JIqh

— ALX 🇺🇸 (@alx) November 18, 2024

DANA WHITE: “The entire country relates with Trump right now… It feels like someone hit the reset button”

pic.twitter.com/Za8if0qScZ

— Benny Johnson (@bennyjohnson) November 18, 2024

KRUISER’S MORNING BRIEFING: Biden Wants to See How Much Mess He Can Make on His Way Out. “It’s important to remember that every foreign policy move that the Biden-Harris administration makes is boneheaded. There was already going to be a lot for Trump to handle when he gets back to Washington.”

WE ARE RULED BY INCOMPETENT, CORRUPT MORONS: Behold the Red Sea Clown Show. “Just read all the above again and wonder—what exactly is being done with your tax dollars and money borrowed in the name of children yet unborn such that the nation that claims to be the world’s premier power is vexed by a dirt poor group of rebels against an equally dirt poor nation, supported by overextended religious fanatics. . . . Having the most advanced intelligence capabilities—I think, maybe like our Navy, we’re second best now—is useless if our most senior leaders cannot understand a threat that has been fighting us for over a year.”

To be fair, much of our senior leadership is sympathetic to, or in the pay of, the Iranians, who are the Houthis’ sponsors.

LIGHTNING DEAL: BLUETTI Portable Power Station AC180. #CommissionEarned

FIGHTING ANTISEMITISM WHILE PRESERVING FREEDOM OF SPEECH: C-Span covered a panel discussion on this issue, sponsored by the Liberty & Law Center at Scalia Law School’s Voices for Liberty Project (I am executive director of the Center). On the panel, I discussed a paper I am coauthoring on the subject, with comments from the Brandeis Center’s Ken Marcus (who served as head of the Department of Education’s Office for Civil Rights in the first Trump administration) and George Washington University professor Sam Goldman. You can watch the discussion here, starting at 4:15 in the video. The basic thrust of my remarks: much of the controversy around antisemitism on college campuses involves actions (vandalism, harassment, disruption, “occupation” of parts of campus) that isn’t protected speech to begin with; when it comes to licit speech, the two basic principles are that universities should adopt a liberal posture on speech, but if they don’t, they should be forced to enforce their rules even-handedly, rather than favor the interest of favored groups (certain racial and ethnic minorities, feminist women, LGBT students, and the like) over others (everyone whom they currently exclude from “intersectionality,” including but hardly limited to Jews).

MILLIONS FOR A STUDY WITH “A SPECIFIC FOCUS ON BLACK DIASPORIC EPISTEMOLOGIES“:  The National Science Foundation is willing to throw $4 million at critical race theory in action.  This study comes from my alma mater–Northwestern University.

HMM: North Korea may end up sending Putin 100,000 troops for his war.

North Korea may deploy as many as 100,000 troops to aid Russia’s war on Ukraine if the alliance between Pyongyang and Moscow continues to deepen, according to people familiar with assessments made by some Group of 20 nations.

The analysis is one of several on the evolving partnership between Russian President Vladimir Putin and North Korean leader Kim Jong Un, said the people, speaking on condition of anonymity to talk about private discussions. They stressed that such a move wasn’t imminent and that military support at that scale — if it occurred — would likely happen in batches with troops rotating over time rather than in a single deployment.

Ukraine’s ambassador to South Korea made a similar assessment earlier this month. Dmytro Ponomarenko said in an interview with VOA that Kyiv expected up to 15,000 North Korean troops deployed to fight in Russia’s Kursk region – and possibly in occupied areas of eastern Ukraine – to rotate every few months.

Spokespeople for South Korea’s Defense Ministry and Presidential Office didn’t respond to requests for comment.

The report is a bit thin, but leaning on Third World s***hole countries like Iran for drones and North Korea for munitions and (so far) 10,000-12,000 soldiers isn’t a great look for a would-be superpower about to complete three years of indecisive warfare against a much smaller opponent.

GOOD ADVICE: Pollster Zogby to Dems: Give Trump his ‘honeymoon,’ don’t ‘Adam Schiff’ him.

THIS IS WHAT YOUR TAXES FUND:  Get a load of the website of URGE.  It’s all about “unlearning racism” in science.  Yes it is funded by the National Science Foundation (as the web site proudly declares).

SENATOR TED CRUZ’S REPORT:  DEI:   Division, Extremism, Ideology:  How the Biden-Harris National Science Foundation Politicized Science.  (This report came out weeks ago, but I haven’t been able to turn to it till now). I understand that Sen. Cruz will be chairing the committee that authorizes the NSF’s budget.  Go get ’em, Senator.  Defund the Left.

TOO LATE: ‘I Don’t Want to Be the Freak Show Party’ Say Centrist Democrats.

Democrats can change but the inmates are running the asylum and won’t go quietly.

DON SURBER: Unsung election hero: Greg Abbott.

ROGER KIMBALL: Elections Have Consequences: How Trump’s Second Term Challenges the Political Status Quo: Democrats assert power after victories, while Republicans compromise–Trump’s 2024 return, with bold Cabinet picks, challenges this norm.

And I love this: “Obama didn’t have FBI vet his nominees because the nominees were corrupt; Trump isn’t having FBI vet his nominees because the FBI is corrupt.”

WELCOME BACK: Rubio and the Return of the Monroe Doctrine.

ALL IS NOT WELL IN THE MIDDLE KINGDOM: Eight killed and 17 wounded in second mass attack in China in a week.

A video circulating online and geolocated by NBC News shows injured people lying on the ground with blood on their clothes and moaning.

Chinese censors were swift to suppress news of the death toll. In less than 30 minutes after police released the statement, the topic could not be found on the trending page of Weibo, China’s X-like platform, while a key word search only yielded limited results.

“It’s so horrifying. Why suppress the trending topic? It won’t change anything,” one user wrote. “It’s truly tragic for those innocent people.”

Can’t stop the signal, Xi.

PATRICK RUFFINI: The Realignment is Here. “The red shift was pretty much everywhere. It was bigger in cities and bigger in Latino counties, but ultimately, the cross-cutting nature of the shift showed that it was a bad environment for Democrats to be running in. . . . The Harris coalition looks more like Bob Dole’s 1996 coalition than the Obama coalition. And for the first time, the Republicans represent both low-education and low-income voters, in a thoroughgoing working class realignment. You’ll also notice that you can draw a line right around the middle of the education vote share gap and this predicts the winner in all but one election since 1996. The candidate with the lower-education coalition typically wins, which is why I argue that it’s so important for Republicans to continue to push this working class shift.”

ALL OF THE ABOVE: Trump’s Energy Policy Will Be ‘Inclusive’ in a Good Way.

CDR SALAMANDER: The Opportunities With Trump’s Return, with Jerry Dunleavy. “With 63 days until President Trump’s second inauguration and a new national security team lining up, what are the expected opportunities they will be looking to make an impact quickly? What should people be looking at? Where is the fruit ripe for the picking?”

THOSE ROBOT REPAIRMEN IN YOU: Bet you didn’t know every cell in your body (and boy, there is a bunch of them!)  is crowded with microscopic robots that fix things, move things, adjust things, etc. etc. And we think we are a big deal when we create a robot that delivers our pizza! Just a little perspective to start your week.